Wowhead Weekly is delighted to announce that Blizzard's Senior WoW PvP Designer, Brian Holinka, will join Perculia and Olivia on a special broadcast of the show today at 2pm Pacific. Wowhead's team will discuss all aspects of WoW PvP with Holinka; Ashran, the latest arena season, gearing, Garrisons and more.

Method and Wowhead to collaborate on Mythic Raiding Guides

Wowhead is really excited to announce that top guild Method will be working with us to provide Mythic raiding guides for all the bosses in Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry.

Method has been among the very best WoW guilds tier after tier, and has already reasserted their position in the Highmaul race, clearing through 5/7 bosses in their first 10 hours raiding. They're a force to be reckoned with in the World First race, having taken World Firsts in every tier in Mists of Pandaria, and we're really excited about this collaboration.

Method will be producing very detailed Mythic raiding text guides, as well as Mythic raiding video guides for each boss. In both guides, members of Method's main raid will talk through the key strategies and provide raid composition advice as well as class specific tips. As a leader in World of Warcraft raiding progression, Method is able to create these guides very early, and we look forward to seeing the first ones appear not long after their progression race is complete.

Outpost Changes

We’re planning to make some changes to the Garrison Zone Outposts, to reduce the costs necessary to change out the building you initially chose while questing through the zone, and also allow you to earn the unique follower associated with alternate building choices. Specifically, these changes will be:

The cost to change your Garrison Outpost building in Gorgrond, Talador, and Spires of Arak reduced to 5,000 gold

The cost to change your Garrison Outpost building in Nagrand reduced to 500 gold

Changing your Garrison Outpost building in a zone will also grant access to the building-specific questline for that zone, including the building-specific follower

Note that you will still be unable to change your Garrison Outpost building until you’ve reached level 100 and earned your current building’s zone achievement, at which point the building can be changed by speaking with the outpost’s foreman NPC (who varies from building to building).

These changes are currently not planned to go live until the next maintenance period for each region, but we wanted to give as much advance notice as possible that they’re on their way.

Profession Recipe Changes for Alchemy and Jewelcrafting

Blizzard Community Manager Rygarius has posted about some upcoming changes for Alchemy and Jewelcrafting. Edit: This is now live

We’re giving a heads up on adjustments being made based on player feedback over the amount of herbs used in recipes by Alchemy and Jewelcrafting. The adjustment will increase the amount of herbs an Alchemist needs and decrease the herb costs for Jewelcrafters.

Citizens of Dalaran! Raise your eyes to the skies and observe! Rhonin, Leader of the Kirin Tor, should now be reciting their spoken lines to characters within a much smaller radius in the streets of the city of Dalaran. Note that his text... his text are still worth reading and continue to still visible to those within the city.

Armsmaster Holinka and Roo Desvin have returned from their vacations and will offer to sell Season 14 gear for honor points to players who have obtained a 2000 rating and earned the Grevious Conquest achievement.

Lore

We recognize that, for some guilds, the transition from 10-player Heroic raiding to 20-player Mythic raiding is going to be something of a challenge. This wasn’t a decision we made lightly. Ultimately, we feel that the long-term benefits for everyone, such as better-tuned raid encounters, a faster encounter design process, and more variety in raid mechanics, are worth the short-term consequences – even for players in guilds facing this transition.

That said, I think there are several key factors worth bringing up that will help make the transition less frightening overall. For example:

1) This change is coming with an expansion. Historically, an expansion release has always been a volatile time for guild rosters – and a great time for recruitment. When everyone’s gear is suddenly equalized, the pool of potential recruits swells dramatically. It's also a time in which a lot of former players, friends, and guildmates return to the game. Sure, maybe not all of the above will be of the caliber you’re looking for as a Mythic-minded raiding guild, but you only need 10.

2) On a similar note, we’re continuing to roll out the Connected Realms feature. As more realms are connected, the potential recruitment pool on those realms will grow.

3) While 10-player guilds who want to do Mythic will need to pick up an extra 10 people, current 25-player guilds will need to shed some. That’s yet another thing that will lead into a higher pool of potential recruits.

4) Flexible scaling for Heroic (or Mists of Pandaria's "Normal") difficulty will allow many guilds to "ease in" to a 20-player raid size. Granted, if you’re planning on zoning into Mythic the first day it’s available, this won’t help you much, but for the guild that will spend a few weeks or months on Heroic (MoP Normal) difficulty before eventually clearing it and starting on Mythic, you’ll have plenty of time to expand your roster. What’s more, those new recruits won’t be expected to just warm the bench while they wait.

I think that’s an easy one to forget about. It’s easy to make a mental comparison between a Warlords of Draenor 10-player guild trying to recruit up to 20 for Mythic, and a Mists of Pandaria 10-player guild trying to recruit up to 25. But that comparison doesn’t really work, because the absolute biggest challenge that the MoP guild in this example faces is finding people who are willing to wait around and possibly not even raid as the guild expands its roster. That’s not a problem in Warlords – while you’re still working through and gearing up in Heroic, player 11, 12, 13, and so on will be able to join you. It’s much easier to keep recruits around when they’re actually getting to play. :)Seeing a lot of debate about the number 20. Let me take a stab at clearing up a few things:

We chose to put Mythic at 20 largely for the function of raid design. One of the biggest issues we're currently facing with 10-player Heroic raiding is that of raid composition. It's impossible for every group to have every class, and often that means they're lacking in certain tools, which in turn means that we can't design encounters around those tools (or if we do, it becomes extremely frustrating for the 10-player Heroic guild that suddenly needs a Paladin for Hand of Protection).

We want to be able to use those sorts of mechanics again. Those of you who have been with us for a while might remember things like Mage tanks on High King Maulgar, or Priests using Mind Control on Instructor Razuvious. We want it to be okay when, say, the Paladin can use Hand of Protection to clear a dangerous debuff, because we can reasonably assume that most guilds will have at least one Paladin in their raid. We like it when someone gets to feel awesome and have a special task on a fight because of class abilities that otherwise wouldn't get much use.

We can't do that when we're designing with a 10-player raid size in mind. We don't think we'd be able to get away with it at 15 either. At 20, it becomes a lot more acceptable for us to say "you should probably bring a Mage to Spellsteal this." And honestly, that's just one example of the sort of encounter mechanics we can start to utilize in a larger group size.

I'd also call into question the statement of "It's easier to drop people than it is to recruit them." It's technically true, yes -- finding new raiders is harder than just not inviting the ones you have -- but totally ignores the fact that cutting people from your roster often means losing people you like. Which feels better: making new friends, or telling your current ones that they don't get to play with you any more? We're already asking a lot of many 25-player Heroic groups to cut 5 people.

As I mentioned before, this was not a decision we came to lightly. It's definitely going to be a very scary transition for a lot of people. We knew that when we made the decision. We just also feel quite strongly that, when the dust settles, we'll be able to provide a better raiding experience for everyone.